Forty-eight more articles about Erdoğan's former lawyer censored

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Access to 48 more articles about a former lawyer for President and Justice and Development Party (AKP) Chair Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have been blocked.

A court on July 29 banned 130 articles about Mustafa Doğan İnal, after a previous complaint by the lawyer.

CLICK - Court blocks access to 130 news articles about Erdoğan's former lawyer 

Applying to the İstanbul Anadolu 9th Penal Judgeship of Peace, İnal requested an access ban on articles about him.

Stating that the links submitted by İnal were "related to the investigation file, and the other content are claims and the content violated his personal rights," the court blocked" access to 48 articles.

The banned articles

Most of the banned articles were about the claims that İnal, Antep Governor Davut Gül and Deputy Mayor Osman Toprak were intercepted by mafia leader Yılmaz Öztürkmen in Antep.

Some of the articles were about his dismissal from the İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality after it was revealed that he had been paid 15 million lira of attorney fee, and a warrant issued against him by the İstanbul 47th Penal Court of First Instance related to the case where journalists Barış Pehlivan and Barış Pehlivan were on trial.

Two bianet articles were also banned by the court order. One was about the ban of the 130 articles, and the other was about a lawsuit filed against bianet's former editor-in-chief, Nazan Özcan, over a report about İnal.

The censored articles were published on the following outlets: bianet, BirGün, Gazete Duvar, t24.com.tr, Bold Medya, Ahval, Kronos, Tükenmez Haber, Cumhuriyet, İleri Haber, Gaziantep Pusula, toplumsal.com.tr, Kısa Dalga, Gerçek Gazete, Pencere TV, KRT, Gerçek Gündem and haber.sol.org.tr.

Over 5,000 articles were censored in 2020

According to a report by the Freedom of Expression Association, 236 penal judgeships of peace issued 819 access blocking orders for 5,645 web addresses in 2020. The outlets have removed 4,620, or 81 percent, of those articles.

In addition, access to a total of 58,809 websites was blocked in 2020. In the last 14 years, 467,011 websites from Turkey were blocked by 764 different institutions (courts and administrative institutions). The association has not yet published its 2021 report. (HA/VK)